Project: Snowth - The Thread

Like Kevin and his Muley thread, this is my thread for various upcoming projects I will be working on (and because I know most of you guys don't follow me on MySpace, so how else are you going to know if you're even remotely interested?).

Anyway, since finances have been tied up into Christmas and such, construction on my new puppets has been delayed until the first of the new year (not too bad); I am happy to say that The Squirrely Squirrels are mostly complete, but they still have to go through wardrobe (and tails), and meanwhile, I still have to order Bethany's fur, but she shouldn't take too much awful longer to finish ('cause Steve's getting impatient, lol).

Afterwards, I have some good news and bad news...

The good news - Steve will be making yet another comeback, only this time, it's a television comeback. In addition to that, Bethany and The Squirrely Squirrels will be making their television debut, as I am outlining a new show entitled Steve D'Monster and Friends (not completely accurate, but "Steve D'Monster and Friend and Nemesises" sounded a bit wordy, lol).

Now, the bad news - unfortunately, this will only be a public access show, which means none of you are going to get to see it... unless you just so happen to be in Knoxville and decide you want to watch community television for some ever reason.

Basically, this is going to be a start into bringing my brand of puppetry to television, so while I still plan on bringing some all-puppet sitcoms to NETWORK television, the plans for them are being put on hold for the time being.

Well, I'm happy to say that I finally was able to find a new "wardrobe mistress", as our seamstress family friend is unable to work anymore because of her unfortunate and somewhat failing health.

But anyway, found a new wardrobe mistress, who is absolutely like a giddy school girl over this assignment, and viewing her impressive previous work in making clothing for dolls, I'm confident I'll be pleased with the finished results with The Squirrely Squirrels in their wardrobe. Too bad her son didn't like Steve though, lol. Somehow, he's kinda hit-and-miss with the really really young crowd.

In the meantime, I'm still trying to outline the premise for the new show... somehow, I can't really see a sitcom-typed program being derived around these characters, but I want to avoid the sketch show type of thing, because it's really been done before already (Banana Splits, TMS, MT, etc).

Bethany's fur has finally been ordered, and is expected to arrive in the mail towards the end of the week, which means I can finally finish the puppet, and Steve will finally have his lady friend.

At the same time, I gave Steve a little bit of a makeover today so he'd not only look more proportionate next to Bethany, but so the puppet itself would look SOMEWHAT brand new, since all of the other puppets will be.

I'm going to be calling my wardrobe mistress and check on the progress of The Squirrely Squirrels' wardrobe.

I'm going to be calling my wardrobe mistress and check on the progress of The Squirrely Squirrels' wardrobe.

Click to expand...

Crap, too late to edit my previous post.

As it turns out, my wardrobe mistress hasn't started the Squirrels' wardrobe yet because of illness in the family and whatnot, so she's going to try to finish them within the next couple of weeks or so.

Well, The Squirrely Squirrels are home, and they look absolutely fantastic in their wardrobe, I am very pleased with the results.

As for Bethany, applying her hair to her head is a painstaking process, but a vast majority of it is finished, so I believe all of the puppets should be completely very, very soon.

I WOULD show pictures, but new digital camera has decided to turn on me - no matter what, everytime I put in new batteries, it STILL says that the battery is dead and won't turn on. What's up with that?

Hot dang! Not sure how, but somehow an employee at Kmart (where my camera came from apparently) found some batteries that worked for my camera, and let me have them free (a tip she gave me is to FREEZE batteries for longer life... go figure), so I'm finally able to take some progress pictures.

Now, I never claimed to be an extraordinary puppet builder... I don't even claim to be a GOOD puppet builder (I'd say PRETTY good), so no prompting please.

Anjanette Hile did an absolutely marvelous job on the Squirrels' wardrobe, I'm really pleased with her work. Now, before anyone asks, I cannot find any suitable fabric for tails, which is why they have none at the moment - I DID purchase some white hair fabric, and tried to dye it, but it came out more of a bright silver than a smokey gray... so, they'll just have to remain tailess until further notice.

And again, they probably will have an overall character design overhaul in the future since I'm not completely happy with how they turned out, but I won't worry about that now.

I'm going to finish up Bethany's hair over the next day or two, and when that's done, I'll have pictures of her. Then the whole gang will be complete and ready for whatever.

No they're not, and as a matter of fact, you're not the first person who has come to assumption, lol.

No, I mentioned on my MySpace blog a while back that the inspiration for The Squirrely Squirrels was derived from the squirrels where I live.

Knoxville is actually composed of a few little communities bordering downtown, and the community I live in, Fountain City, is relatively older, so there are a LOT of old neighborhoods with really large and mature trees, and where there's a lot of large and mature trees, there's a LOT of squirrels - our old apartment complex had a lot of these trees, and there's been days where I'd stand out on our balcony and watch the squirrels chase each other through the trees, hop from one tree to another, flatten themselves up against the branches when they know they're being watched, etc.

I actually have another character that probably won't see the light of day for a while, that has been inspired by more creatures that are common up here... only these creatures are pests that can really ruin one's summer, lol.

The squirrels look nice! I can't see Bethany on the school laptop however (what with them blocking a lot of sites).

Click to expand...

That's odd, considering that all the pics are hosted from Photobucket.

But to the point: I had a pretty good meeting with a pal of mine at PBS today, for insight and such on how to get the show into production, and he agrees that community television is the best route to take for several different reasons (including with community television, there's no trying to get underwriting and funding, because everything's already paid for by the taxpayers' dollars, lol).

That said, there's also the possibilities that through community television, I might have to take some crash courses/classes in television production... either way, I'm heading in the right direction.

More good news is that I got contact information regarding a puppeteer I once worked with, I'm going to get in touch with her to see if she would be interested in playing Bethany, and if she knows any additional puppeteers who might like to audition for The Squirrely Squirrels.

All and all... things ARE moving forward, just at a very slow pace.

That said, basically as far as the actual puppets are concerned, I STILL have to find fabric for the Squirrels' tails and such.